‘Stealing Away: When Wrong is the Only Choice’ by Amy Ruth Allen is a deeply introspective look into the life of a girl who has become deeper and deeper involved in a mess, at least partially of her own making. Jaynie Haart lives life on the run, metaphorically at first, and before long, literally. The death of her police officer father, and the subsequent deterioration of her mother into a drug addict, has catapulted Jaynie into a state of fear and the desire to take on desperate measures that she feels will only serve to help her rather than continue to hurt her.

Little does Jaynie know that taking on another girl’s identity, followed up by those of even more girls, will take a horrible toll on her sanity. The fear she sustains throughout the story for her life, both before and after she steals away, is understandably terrifying. The relationship her mother has found herself rooted in with the man Jaynie calls Gross Dave has driven someone to try to get Jaynie out of her mother’s house, into the care of Social Services. Even though it seems the simpler way out in many ways, Jaynie decides that she knows better, which causes her to uproot her entire existence and take on new personas, new physical looks, and new locations all to get away from the life she has been stuck in for far too long since her father died.

Many readers might say that Jaynie truly had no other choice – that she had to get out of there no matter the cost, and stealing identities was the only way to make that happen. Others – those with a bit more common sense – are more likely to say that she should have taken the advice of Social Services. If she was planning to get away from her mother anyway, going with Social Services wouldn’t necessarily have spelled the end of the world for her mother. When she skipped town, she left herself with no way to keep her mother safe, but at least being in the custody of Social Services would have afforded her the opportunity to know more of what was going on with her mother, and maybe she could have helped her more in that way.

Amy Ruth Allen has created a world where instincts matter most, and fear, coupled with pain, comes knocking at every turn. Jaynie’s relationships with those she meets when she arrives in her main stop along the way – Sierra Beach, California – creates more trouble for her as she falls for a boy, Zach. This relationship seemed to develop far too quickly, but sometimes people do just hit it off, so realistically, their fondness for each other could have grown as quickly as it did in the book. Yet, it seems as though Jaynie’s secrets and Zach’s elusive nature would have caused them to question more about each other earlier on, rather than expressing interest in a relationship when they hardly knew anything about each other. The story is one of courage, stamina, and defeating the odds – a combination that is not easily mastered, but which keeps readers’ attention as they learn whether Jaynie will win or lose at the crapshoot that has taken over her life.

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